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Preet Bharara confirmed as
Manhattan attorney
WSN Network
 WASHINGTON:
The US senate has confirmed India-born lawyer Preet Bharara as
Manhattan's
next US attorney who will oversee some of the most prominent cases
like the prosecution of Bernard L. Madoff for his
multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
"As a
naturalized American citizen from
India,
Bharara also brings a diversity of background to the post," said the
New York Times noting that for this nominee of President Barack
Obama "politics and prosecution don't mix."
And while recent
United States attorneys in Manhattan have come directly from
prosecutors' jobs, Bharara's background on Capitol Hill will serve
him well, it said citing Daniel C. Richman, a law professor at
Columbia University and a former Southern District prosecutor.
Preetinder S.
Bharara, 40, was born in Ferozepur, India, and he was an infant when
his parents immigrated to the United States in 1970. He grew up in
Monmouth County, New Jersey, and graduated from Harvard in 1990 and
Columbia
Law
School
in 1993.
His father, a
Sikh, and his mother, who was Hindu, were born in what is now
Pakistan. In the violent migration that occurred after the 1947
partition, his father and mother both moved to the Indian side, with
their families losing property and most of their possessions,
Bharara has said.
His wife's
father, a Muslim, also moved, from the Indian side into Pakistan,
also losing his home "and much, much more," as Bharara put it
according to the Times. And his wife's mother was born in
Palestine,
after her father, who was Jewish, escaped with his family from Nazi
Germany.
"Four different
families, practicing four different faiths - all compelled to flee a
half century ago because of their religion," Bharara said in a
speech to the South Asian Bar Association of New York in 2007.
12
August 2009
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